Exaggeration and our schools

It goes without saying that newspapers have a tendency towards exaggeration, simply to get people reading further than one sentence.

If a newspaper headline reads: “Sky is falling in, claims scientist,” you can bet your bottom dollar that by the third or fourth paragraph of the story, there’ll be some kind of more nuanced explanation of this claim or at least an indication of the state of mind of this scientist.

I’m trying to find a charitable reason for the story last week that the state education system is producing a generation of ‘amoral children’. Richard Walden, chairman of the Independent Schools Association, says that relentless focus on league tables and results was distracting schools from their need to give pupils a rounded education. In contrast, he argued that private schools embraced extra-curricular activities, collective worship, community service and school trips outside the classroom.

In some senses, he’s undoubtedly correct that secondary schools risk becoming like qualifications and results factories. Teachers seem to spend their lives assessing and testing what pupils have learnt, which surely detracts from quality teaching time. Exams and assessments for GCSEs start impossibly early for many pupils. My children’s second- ary school is even considering shortening the school day by 20 minutes because of the view that an hour-long lunchtime is a waste of the time of the pupil and teacher. The sociable aspects of school life are marginalised by such policies.

Frankly, Mr Walden is wrong that schools produce ‘amoral’ children but he is undoubtedly right that state schools do not always help young people to gain a fully rounded and balanced liberal education.

It is in the home where fundamental values of right and wrong are passed on to children. If children have not learned the word ‘no’ and the difference between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ by the time they go to school then their parents have let them down – not the schools.

Even so, the press release from the Church of England responding to Mr Walden’s remarks was distinctly over-the-top. The Rev Janina Ainsworth described his comments as “palpably absurd’ and demonstrating “an extraordinary ignorance” of the high quality education in state schools. Her final remark was an invitation to show Richard Walden why she is so proud of church schools. The trouble is that having had his remarks described as both ‘absurd’ and ‘ignorant’ I’m not sure he’d want to take up the invitation.